Black Heart – Chapter IX Part VIII

Harper was speaking quietly to someone when Bryan got back to his office. He looked in to see her and Cam on the couch, his hands in hers. She was telling him something Bryan couldn’t hear. She saw him at the door and said to Cam “Okay?”

He gave a thin empty smile and nodded.

They were talking about you.

Was that Hussein’s voice, or the beta’s, or the gamma’s? Or just his own? Did he have his own voice anymore?

Harper stood and left the room, and in passing by Bryan stopped for a moment but seemed unsure of what to say, and so walked out.

“Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?” Bryan said to Cam like an accusation.

“I’m perfectly healthy,” Cam said. “Physically.”

“Did you think of anything that could help us?”

Cam looked down at his hands. “No.”

“Dammit Cam, then go be with your family, not here. We don’t have any ideas either.”

“I can’t…”

“There’s nothing for you here.” Bryan stormed to his desk as if that was the end of it.

“My sister keeps a gun in her house,” Cam blurted out.

Bryan stopped so quickly he rocked on his feet, as if the words had struck him. He looked at Cam again, who kept his head down, slumped over. Bryan suddenly felt sick for suspecting him of…something. He didn’t even know what he had been suspecting. He had just been automatically suspicious of his being here. He went over to Cam and sat beside him.

“It’s really hopeless,” Cam said. “Isn’t it?”

It’s not.

“I don’t know,” Bryan said out loud.

You do.

“But you just said, the Office has no ideas.”

But you do.

“I’m thinking still. Just thinking. Okay?” Bryan swallowed. Cam looked so lifeless, hopeless. This wasn’t the Cam he had sent marching through a gate.

“I can’t see all those things again,” Cam said. “And what they do. How they eat. I won’t.”

“You won’t have to,” Bryan argued. “Give me time.”

Cam looked at him, his eyes so empty and so sad at the same time. “You will think of something, won’t you?”

You know what to do.

“Yeah,” Bryan nodded. “Yeah, I – ”

“Just don’t become one of them.”

Bryan’s breath caught. “What?”

“They’ve been telling you to. But that’s not the way.”

Bryan’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what Harper told you?”

“She didn’t have to. I was there when we interrogated that Eternal in the cafeteria. I know you think you can use that. But I’ve seen them, so many of them, and they were just one city. How many of them thought they were going to help their planets?”